Scattered Thoughts . . .

T he sky was clear this morning so I decided to do a little solar observing rather than woodworking.  I'd really like to get the two woodworking projects I am working on finished but I couldn't pass up the clear skies especially since I haven't really done any solar observing yet this year.   I had a couple of things related to solar observing that I wanted to try so it seemed like a good morning to do some experimenting with astronomy gear.  The weather should be nice for the next few days so I could easily put off the woodworking projects for a day so I could finally get to spend some time observing the sun. I had a lot of nice success with a larger telescope when using my new binoviewers while viewing the moon, Venus and Mars last night so I wanted to try solar observing with the same binoviewers for solar observing.  Viewing with two eyes provides far less eye strain than viewing with one eye and eye strain is something I have been experiencing lately.   Last night I wa

W hen I was doing some solar observing last week, I was having some problems keeping my single eye focused and open while also keeping my other eye closed.  After about five or ten minutes of observing with one eye, my eyes were twitching and they simply were not cooperating anymore.  I am definitely getting old!   These types of eye difficulties are often related to typical weakness due to old age but it is also partially related to my primary illness.  If I am beginning to have difficulty seeing through my telescopes as I did the other day, then that is a serious problem and I need to find a solution to this problem.   I felt the best solution was to get a binoviewer made specifically for telescopes so I could view the sky with both eyes instead of only one.  This is known to alleviate the typical eye strain from viewing with only one eye for longer periods of time. So, a couple of days ago, I ordered a binoviewer to be used on my telescopes and it arrived in the mail today.  Natura